Monitored quantum systems undergo measurement-induced phase transitions (MiPTs) stemming from the interplay between measurements and unitary dynamics. When the detector readout is postselected to match a given value, the dynamics is generated by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian with MiPTs characterized by different universal features. Here, we derive a stochastic Schrödinger equation based on a microscopic description of continuous weak measurement. This formalism connects the monitored and postselected dynamics to a broader family of stochastic evolution. We apply the formalism to a chain of free fermions subject to partial postselected monitoring of local fermion parities. Within a two-replica approach, we obtain an effective bosonized Hamiltonian in the strong postselected limit. Using a renormalization group analysis, we find that the universality of the non-Hermitian MiPT is stable against a finite (weak) amount of stochasticity. We further show that the passage to the monitored universality occurs abruptly at finite partial postselection, which we confirm from the numerical finite size scaling of the MiPT. Our approach establishes a way to study MiPTs for arbitrary subsets of quantum trajectories and provides a potential route to tackle the experimental postselected problem.
Monitored quantum systems undergo measurement-induced phase transitions (MiPTs) stemming from the interplay between measurements and unitary dynamics. When the detector readout is postselected to match a given value, the dynamics is generated by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian with MiPTs characterized by different universal features. Here, we derive a stochastic Schrödinger equation based on a microscopic description of continuous weak measurement. This formalism connects the monitored and postselected dynamics to a broader family of stochastic evolution. We apply the formalism to a chain of free fermions subject to partial postselected monitoring of local fermion parities. Within a two-replica approach, we obtain an effective bosonized Hamiltonian in the strong postselected limit. Using a renormalization group analysis, we find that the universality of the non-Hermitian MiPT is stable against a finite (weak) amount of stochasticity. We further show that the passage to the monitored universality occurs abruptly at finite partial postselection, which we confirm from the numerical finite size scaling of the MiPT. Our approach establishes a way to study MiPTs for arbitrary subsets of quantum trajectories and provides a potential route to tackle the experimental postselected problem.
The interplay of unitary evolution and local measurements in many-body systems gives rise to a stochastic state evolution and to measurement-induced phase transitions in the pure state entanglement. In realistic settings, however, this dynamics may be spoiled by decoherence, e.g., dephasing, due to coupling to an environment or measurement imperfections. We investigate the impact of dephasing and the inevitable evolution into a non-Gaussian, mixed state, on the dynamics of monitored fermions. We approach it from three complementary perspectives: (i) the exact solution of the conditional master equation for small systems, (ii) quantum trajectory simulations of Gaussian states for large systems, and (iii) a renormalization group analysis of a bosonic replica field theory. For weak dephasing, constant monitoring preserves a weakly mixed state, which displays a robust measurement-induced phase transition between a critical and a pinned phase, as in the decoherence-free case. At strong dephasing, we observe the emergence of a new scale describing an effective temperature, which is accompanied with an increased mixedness of the fermion density matrix. Remarkably, observables such as density-density correlation functions or the subsystem parity still display scale invariant behavior even in this strongly mixed phase. We interpret this as a signature of gapless, classical diffusion, which is stabilized by the balanced interplay of Hamiltonian dynamics, measurements, and decoherence.
We investigate measurement-induced localization in a continuously monitored one-dimensional Aubry--André--Harper model, focusing on the quantum Zeno regime in which the measurements dominate coherent dynamics. The presence of a quasiperiodic potential renders the problem analytically tractable and enables a controlled study of the interplay between monitoring and disorder. We develop an analytical description based on an instantaneous Schrödinger equation with a measurement-induced effective potential constructed self-consistently from individual quantum trajectories, without relying on postselection. In the quantum Zeno regime, an emergent dominant energy scale reduces the problem to a transfer-matrix formulation of an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, which allows direct computation of the Lyapunov exponent. Complementarily, we extract the localization length numerically from long-time steady-state quantum state diffusion trajectories by reconstructing the intrinsic localized single-particle wave functions and analyzing their spatial decay. These numerical results show quantitative agreement with the effective theory predictions, with controlled corrections of order J2/[λ2+(γ/2)2] (where J is the hopping amplitude, γ the measurement strength, and λ the quasiperiodic potential). Our results underscore the connection between the effective non-Hermitian description and the stochastic monitored dynamics, showing the interplay between Zeno-like localization, coherent hopping, and quasiperiodic-disorder-induced localization, while also laying the groundwork for understanding and exploiting measurement-induced localization as a tool for quantum control and state preparation.
We present a theoretical and numerical study of measurement-induced phase transitions and quantum Zeno dynamics in continuously monitored open many-body systems. Moving beyond closed unitary systems, we investigate the competition between chaotic unitary evolution and continuous weak measurements by employing the stochastic Schrödinger equation (quantum jump Monte Carlo) formalism and non-hermitian effective Hamiltonians. Our analysis examines the transition from area-law to volume-law entanglement scaling, mutual information properties, and the critical scaling hypothesis near the measurement-rate threshold. Furthermore, we derive original analytical estimates for the quantum correlation damping decrement in the regime of strong Zeno suppression and validate the theoretical findings using stochastic trajectory numerical simulation protocols with finite-size scaling.
Information-theoretic phase transitions, such as the measurement-induced phase transition (MIPT), characterize the robustness of quantum dynamics to local monitoring and are naturally formulated in terms of trajectories conditioned on typical measurement outcomes, which are naively accessible only through postselection. Here, we implement forced measurements to investigate how explicit postselection alters the nature of the transition. We find that postselection fundamentally alters the universality class by reweighting trajectories that are otherwise rare. In particular, we obtain a correlation-length exponent ν≈2.1 larger than that of the standard MIPT and a negative effective central charge ceff≈−0.35. We also compare the postselected MIPT to the entanglement transition of random tensor networks, and demonstrate that their universality class is the same. This setup further allows time-periodic, translationally invariant circuits with postselected weak measurements. In both models, we find that an on-site dimension of at least 3 (qutrits but not qubits) is necessary to induce a transition.
Monitored quantum system have sparked great interest in recent years due to the possibility of observing measurement-induced phase transitions (MIPTs) in the full-counting statistics of quantum trajectories. Here, we investigate the dynamics of the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, composed of N all-to-all interacting spins 1/2, under a weak external monitoring. In the thermodynamic limit, we derive a set of semiclassical stochastic equations describing the evolution of the expectation values of global spin observables. Our results show that the limit $N\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$ does not commute with the long-time limit: while for any finite N the average over trajectories is expected to converge towards a trivial steady state, in the thermodynamic limit a MIPT appears. The transition is not affected by postselection issues, as it is already visible at the level of ensemble averages. We derive a quantitative theoretical picture explaining the nature of the transition within our semiclassical approach.
The competition between quantum many-particle dynamics and continuous monitoring can lead to measurement-induced phase transitions (MIPTs). So far, MIPTs have been extensively explored in fermionic or spin systems. To examine the possibility of an MIPT in bosonic systems, we study the entanglement structure in continuously monitored free bosons with long-range couplings. When the measurement is local, we find that no MIPTs occur because the substantial entanglement generated by the long-range coupling overcomes the entanglement destruction due to the measurement. In contrast, we show that the nonlocal measurement can efficiently suppress the entanglement generation, leading to an MIPT where the bipartite entanglement entropy exhibits the subvolume-to-area law phase transition as the measurement strength is increased. Our numerical results indicate that the critical point should be described by a certain conformal field theory, while the transition does not belong to a conventional universality class such as Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless class.